An ambitious digital imaging project has created what researchers describe as a “digital twin” of the RMS Titanic, showing the wreckage of the doomed ocean liner with a level of detail never before captured.
The project, conducted by Magellan Ltd., a deep-sea bottom mapping company, yielded more than 16 terabytes of data, 715,000 still images and a high-resolution video. The images were captured during a six-week expedition in the summer of 2022 nearly 1.7 miles below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic Productions, which is working on a documentary about the project, said in a press release.
The researchers used two submarines, named Romeo and Juliet, to map “every millimeter” of the wreckage, as well as the entire three-mile-long debris field. Making the model, which shows the ship resting on the ocean floor and the area around it, took about eight months, said Anthony Geffen, the CEO and creative director of Atlantic Productions.
“We’re going to write the proper science of the Titanic now,” he said.
Earlier images of the wreck, found less than 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in 1985, suffered from low light and murky waters. The new footage has effectively removed the ocean water, allowing the wreck to be viewed in “extraordinary detail,” Atlantic Productions said, noting that a serial number can be seen on a propeller.
The Titanic, the largest passenger ship built at the time, sank on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Many details of the disaster, which killed more than 1,500 people, have since remained a mystery.
The models provide new details about the shipwreck that were previously unknown, Mr Geffen said. For example, he said that one of the lifeboats was blocked by a jammed metal piece and could not be deployed.
The submarines captured images of personal artifacts, such as watches, top hats and unopened champagne bottles, strewn across the debris field. Experts hope they can match personal items with Titanic passengers using artificial intelligence, Geffen said. He added that one day people could also witness the shipwreck through virtual reality and augmented reality.
“In accordance with strict regulations in place, the wreck was not touched or disturbed,” said Atlantic Productions, adding that the site was treated “with the utmost respect, including a ceremony of laying flowers in memory of those who lost their lives. .”
“This has been a challenging mission,” Richard Parkinson, Magellan’s founder and CEO, said in a statement. “In the mid-Atlantic, we had to battle the elements, inclement weather and technical challenges to carry out this unprecedented mapping and digitization operation of the Titanic.”
